All the news on the Earth's largest environment.

A comment on Reddit reminded me of a question that I have received many times. The question is always a good one because it stems from knowledge and deductive reasoning. The said question requires one ...

Practically nothing was known about the biology of whale sharks up until about 15 years ago. Since that time there has been a veritable explosion of interest in the world’s largest fish. As we have ...

Magnapinna squids are one of the deep-sea more ethereal creatures. Little is known of these squid as very few have ever been captured, although over the last decade with the increased usage of ...

Solar eclipse. From Wikimedia commons. On July 20th, 1963, three scientists sat on a research ship 200 miles south of Woods Hole, MA, waiting for something remarkable. They were nearly 4000m above the ...

Readers of DSN may think they know my favorite organism. Did you guess the giant isopod or did you guess the giant squid? Those beasties are truly fantastic. Large and dwelling in the deep oceans, ...

Megalodon (Carcharocles megalodon) is the largest shark, at a magnificent maximum length of 18 meters (59 feet), to ever have dwelled in the oceans. We know primarily about Megalodon’s existence ...

From the study, “The majority of the DDT+ compounds (87%, n = 13) detected in the sediment and biota were previously detected in [local] birds and marine mammals. This discovery is critical and ...

The ROV Global Explorer reaches bottom at around 9:01 am, nearly 3.5 kilometers deep in the Gulf of Mexico. The 1.5-ton machine flies nimbly through a shallow valley before rising up and over a peak.

Earlier this year I warned that The Ocean Cleanup would catch and kill floating marine life. This week they announced they’re collecting plastic, and their picture shows HUNDREDS of floating animals ...

David Cassidy, 70’s heartthrob and star of The Partridge Family, died today at age 67. In November of 1970, his hit song, “I Think I love You,” was everywhere on AM radio. It’s one of the first hit ...

Like most deep-sea biologists, I have a large collection of decorated Styrofoam cups. A couple dozen line the bookshelf of my office, each displaying a rainbow of Sharpie colors. Each cup is ...